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Zhihong Chen portrait
History Department

Zhihong Chen

Associate Professor for History


Office

Archdale-204
+1 (336) 3162065
chenz@guilford.edu

Biography


Zhihong Chen (pronouns: she/her) has been at Guilford College since 2008 and is currently an Associate Professor of History. 

She was born in a small village in China and was a first-generation college student. She studied Philosophy at Beijing University before she came to the University of Oregon to finish her Ph.D. in Chinese History.

Her main research interests include modern Chinese frontier studies, ethnicity, travel writings, and the disciplinary development of geography in modern China.

A recipient of Guilford College’s Bruce B. Stewart ’61 Teaching Award in 2020, she enjoys teaching various courses on Asian History.

Selected Scholarship


Published Works:

  • “Romance with the Periphery: Chinese Travel Writing about the ‘Frontier’ during the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937).” Journal of Tourism History Volume 8, Issue 3 (2016), 215-238. 
  • "The Frontier Crisis and the Construction of Modern Chinese Geography in Republican China (1911-1949).” Asian Geographer: A Geographical Journal on Asia and the Pacific Rim, Volume 33, Issue 2 (2016), 141-164. 
  • “‘Climate’s Moral Economy:’ Geography, Race and the Han in Early Republican China,” in Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China’s Majority, eds. Thomas Mullaney, James Leibold, Stéphane Gros and Eric Vanden Bussche. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 73-91. 
  • “Crossing Boundaries: Walking among Different Worlds” (“界限穿越:行走在多重世界 之间”), “Preface” to Youxi Kang, The Audacity of Dream (无畏的梦想) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Jishi Chuban Youxian Gongxi, 2009).

Courses Taught


First-year Seminar: Modern China in Film and Literature
First-year Seminar: Re(Connecting) through Kindness
INTR 150: Understanding Global Challenges
HIST 164: Asia Pacific in Modern Times
HIST 188: History of East Asia to 1800
HIST/PSCI 250: Politics, Multiple Identities, and Transnational Memories: Asian American Communities
HIST/REL 250: The Digital Silk Road
HIST 266: Modern China in Film
HIST 268: Gender & Sexuality in Chinese History
HIST 283: Silk & Silver: Imperial China
HIST 284: China in Revolutoin
HIST 283: Samurai in Word & Image
HIST 286: Japan: Its Road to War
HIST 310: Youth Movements in the Modern World
HIST 402: History Capstone